Peace is a Practice: Learning to be Present

Entering into a new year. Amazing how quickly one year goes and another one comes. I was reading back through my previous journal entries in my Day One app (digital journal) and for the past few years, around this time, I shared similar thoughts, feelings, and insights. Reflecing on these entries was a reminder that life happens in cycles. We live life in a rhymthic way. Like music, there are high and low notes, high and low seasons. On December 3, 2021, I captured a quote from Katherine May's book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Diffuclt Times that beautifully describes this:

"We tend to imagine our lives are linear, but they are in fact cyclical. As we grow older, we pass through phases of good health and ill, or optimism and deep doubt, of freedom and constraint. There are times when everything seems easy and times when it all seems imposisbly hard. To make that managebale, we have to remember that our present will one day become a past, and our future will be our present. We know that because it's happened before. The things we put behind us will often come around again. The things that trouble us now will one day be past history. Each time we endure the cycle, we ratchet up a notch. In the meantime, we can deal only with what's in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next. At some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again."

During the wintering months, my anxiety can become really loud and all consuming of my mind and body. I can more quickly go into thought spirals and it is harder to navigate out of them. This winter season, I am using Morgan Harper Nichols book Peace is a Practice: An Invitation to Breathe Deep and Find a New Rhythm for Life as a guide to be more present and move through the discomfort.

She explains that "peace is a state of mind, heart, body, and soul. It is the freedom to breathe, even in the face of great challenges and chaos. Peace is the river in the desert, not on the other side of it"(pg. 3). Like life, the breahte is a cycle of inhales and exhales. The inhale makes room for inspiration, the exhale is a form of release, the realization that when we let go, we find freedom.

Take a moment and pause. Take it what is around in your the very moment. Breathe. Focus on your five senses. What do you smell? See? Taste? Feel? Hear?

It's in the everyday moments where we learn more about ourselves and what we need to keep moving.

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Practices for peace:

• Focus on your breath for 30 seconds

• Make a playlist of songs that get you into your body

• Look out the window and notice 3 new things

• Go on a walk without headphones and just listen to the sounds around you

• If you make a list of new years intentions or resolutions, go back and read through the list and pay attention to your emotions in that moment as you reread it

• Light a candle and take in how it can light up a whole room that was once dark

• Call a friend

• Watch or read something that makes you laugh

• Slow down when doing a routine task (like brushing your teeth)

• Give yourself permission to just be. You are enough. Right here. Right now. In this moment

With love, Sam